Vitale pleads not guilty to lobbying, campaign violations

Judge keeps case outline private

BROKEN TIES Richard Vitale (left) was Salvatore DiMasi's campaign treasurer and accountant. They have reportedly severed their business relationship.

Richard D. Vitale pleaded not guilty yesterday to lobbying and campaign violations during a brief hearing at which a judge declined to make public an 18-page outline of the case. The document contained details of the dealings between Vitale and his friend and former client, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi.

"Not guilty," said Vitale during his arraignment at Suffolk Superior Court. His lawyer, Martin Weinberg, convinced Judge Peter Lauriat that the outline of the case should not be filed as a public document because it would undermine Vitale's right to a fair trial.

Weinberg also said the statement, containing allegations heard by a grand jury this fall, would harm "uncharged, unindicted people."

He acknowledged sharing the statement with a lawyer for another person involved in the case. He did give a name but said he has a joint defense agreement with other potential targets. Weinberg answered "no comment" when asked by a reporter after the hearing whether DiMasi's lawyer, Thomas Kiley, had seen the statement. Kiley would not say whether he has such an agreement with Weinberg.

According to two lawyers consulted by the Globe, joint defense agreements allow lawyers with shared interests to communicate without having to disclose their communications to investigators: Their conversations are covered by the lawyer-client privilege. If the clients' interests diverge, the agreements can be broken, the lawyers said.

Vitale, 63, the cofounder of the Vitale Caturano accounting firm, was DiMasi's longtime accountant and campaign treasurer. DiMasi's spokesman, David Guarino, said Saturday that Vitale was no longer the speaker's accountant and they had severed their business relationship several months ago. DiMasi had not previously disclosed that Vitale was no longer his accountant.

Vitale was indicted Dec. 18 on charges of violating lobbying and campaign finance laws while secretly working on behalf of a ticket brokers' group that was seeking to remove the state's cap on ticket prices.

He is accused of directly lobbying DiMasi and House Speaker Pro Tempore Thomas Petrolati on several occasions. The group, the Massachusetts Association of Ticket Brokers, reported paying Vitale $60,000 in 2007.

DiMasi, who told the Globe in April that he never discussed the legislation with Vitale and didn't even know he was working for the group, declined to comment yesterday.

Weinberg has called the charges minor regulatory offenses and said that under the state's lobbying law, Vitale, who was forced to resign from the firm in May, did nothing wrong.

He is expected to return to court Feb. 9, with a trial date set for June 15. He had been scheduled to be arraigned last Monday, but his attorney asked that his presence at the hearing be waived because he was vacationing. After prosecutors said they would oppose that motion, the sides agreed to delay the hearing until yesterday.

Although prosecutors were not able to file the outline of the case, they did submit a long list of documents they gathered during their grand jury probe. The material will be turned over to Vitale's lawyer.

The 186-item list, which included phone records, e-mails, and bank statements, offered a hint at the case compiled by prosecutors.

The documents suggest the ticket brokers' relationship with Vitale dated to the spring of 2006 - six months earlier than the lobbying reports filed by the ticket brokers indicate.

That year, on May 7, Vitale referred to "DiMasi/Petro meetings" in an e-mail he wrote to his assistant. On June 7, Vitale forwarded an e-mail from DiMasi aide, Daniel Toscano, to James Holzman, of Ace Tickets, the head of the ticket brokers group, detailing the ticket resale legislation currently under consideration.

On June 22, Vitale, Holzman, and Toscano met, according to Vitale Caturano records.

Donald Stern, the lawyer for the ticket brokers, would not say whether the group paid Vitale in 2006.

The documents gathered by investigators also include records of the unusual $250,000 third mortgage that another Vitale company, Washington North Realty Trust, gave DiMasi on his Commercial Street condo.

Vitale has not registered as a lobbyist, saying he only gave the group strategic help. Had he registered, he may have run afoul of the state's conflict of interest law, which prohibits lobbyists from giving anything of value to public officials.

Prosecutors also obtained information about several of Vitale's business ventures - including his consulting work for Joseph Lally, the salesman who successfully secured two multimillion-dollar contracts with the state for the software firm, Cognos ULC, of Burlington.

Lally paid Vitale's company, WN Advisors, $600,000 in 2006 and 2007 - as the company was winning $17.5 million in state contracts.